Wednesday, August 27, 2008

A medical case report published in Hematociencias is important to reflect on the mechanism for generating hepatocellular cancer preceded by chronic infection of hepatitis B virus, in which case the genome of the hepatitis B virus, is inserted into the genome of the human host, generating hundreds of thousands of hepatocytes with hybrids genomes, which would eventually become in hepatocellular cancer. It is a spontaneous or conditioned (by certain weaknesses of the human body), horizontal gene transfer. We wonder whether these patients are: partial human transgenics. Of course, with the difference that the process of hybridization is initially confined to the liver, rather than to the whole organism.

A horizontal gene transfer, which occurs more frequently than imagined, with the proviso that the human body selects most of the time, the most convenient genes, rejecting the bads. Fortunately the transgenic cancerous condition is not the rule, but the exception. When the horizontal gene transmission carries bad genes to the body, this are almost always rejected. The body accept only beneficial genes. In the worst case its undesirable effects occur in a minimum number of cases, if not millions of humans would die each time that happens a viral epidemic. Extrapolating the phenomenon to the debate on the use of transgenic plants and animals in Peru, we say that our position is favourable to the use of them, leaving not to recognize certain minimal risks, whose occurrence must be corrected or minimized by following the precept that path is made while one walk. For us it is very important to focus on the enormous benefits that GMOs offer: better and abundant crops and elimination of hunger worldwide.